Donald Trump flouted many pundits’ projections on Tuesday night, toppling Hillary Clinton in a stunning victory in the 2016 presidential election that will make the real-estate magnate and reality-TV star the 45th president of the United States. The election’s outcome has elicited a wide array of reactions in the sports world. One of the strongest came Wednesday afternoon from Detroit Pistons head coach Stan Van Gundy.

As the Pistons prepared for Wednesday night’s road game against the Phoenix Suns, Van Gundy held court at Detroit’s shootaround. Evidently, he wasn’t too interested in talking about how good Tobias Harris looks, or the challenge of continuing to work without injured point guard Reggie Jackson, or the problems for Detroit’s defense likely to be posed by a Suns club led by sharpshooting sophomore Devin Booker. Instead, the Pistons coach — no

LeBron James endorsed the presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton, whom he said he believed would “build on the legacy of my good friend, President Barack Obama,” whom he praised as “a champion for children and their futures,” and whom he lauded for “running on the message of hope and unity that we need.” The Cleveland Cavaliers superstar and teammate J.R. Smith stumped for the Democratic nominee at a campaign rally in Ohio over the weekend.

For whatever reason, NFL ratings are down. The league is still clearly far and away the most popular of all the North American pro sports, but the NFL’s litany of “showcase” games on Sunday, Monday and Thursday evenings have taken a dive in terms of televised viewership this year, alongside the Sunday afternoon bashfests we’re all used to.

There are unending reasons for this, and myriad ways to chomp down on the guesswork behind the dips that have marked the season as it enters its tenth week. Because NBA superstar LeBron James is likely the most popular and famous athlete in America and a noted NFL fan, ESPN’s Dave McMenamin thought it appropriate to ask the Cleveland Cavaliers champion why, exactly, he thinks fans are turning away from a pastime they once couldn’t get enough of:

The United States of America experienced one of the most shocking upsets in the country’s political history on Tuesday night, as Republicans showed up at the polls en masse to buck expert projections and elect billionaire reality TV personality Donald Tump the nation’s 45th president. Consider it an embrace of his (at least) four-year plan to Make America Great Again by more than 59 million citizens.

Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, a swing state that swung Republican for the first time since 1988, Philadelphians were well aware of another such campaign to make something great again, for the first time since the 1980s, no less: former Sixers general manager Sam Hinkie’s philosophy of building a roster so inept the franchise would continually tank its way to top-tier draft picks and ultimately land a superstar or two capable of dragging the team from the

An inbounds play with less than a second on the clock is very unlikely to succeed. The offensive team must run a play that finds someone in a position to shoot pretty much immediately and with a decent chance of getting a bucket. There’s a reason most buzzer-beaters show players going pulling up for jumpers — it’s just very, very difficult to create something from an inbounds play in so little time.

Congrats to the Memphis Grizzlies, then, for coming up with this beauty to top the Denver Nuggets on Tuesday night. With just 0.7 seconds on the clock, Vince Carter found Marc Gasol for this lay-in:

The key moment in the play is the screen by James Ennis, who takes out two defenders to free up Gasol for the 108-107 win. The winner gave Gasol 19 points for the night, one shy of Carter’s team-high 20. VC was far from the only player to contribute off the Memphis bench — it out-scored the Denver reserves 55-25.

We’re only a fortnight removed from Spencer Hawes disapproving of people more interested in “blurting the talking points that you see on cable news” than having a civil discussion about politics. It was that same sitdown with Sporting News writer Adi Joseph on Oct. 24 when the Charlotte Hornets big man said it’s “safe to say I will not be endorsing anybody” in the presidential election.

Indiana Pacers forward Paul George has been fined $15,000 for kicking a basketball into the stands at Bankers Life Fieldhouse on Saturday night and hitting a young woman in the face in the process, the NBA announced Tuesday.

With 1:42 remaining in the third quarter of the game between the Pacers and the visiting Chicago Bulls, George got ticked off at being called for a foul while defending a driving Jimmy Butler. Frustrated, he kicked the bouncing ball in front of him on the baseline. Perhaps he intended to bounce it off the stanchion; instead, though, it sailed into the crowd, hitting a young woman sitting near the court in the face.

When the refs realized what had gone on, they immediately hit George with a technical foul and ejected him from the game. He finished with 13 points, seven rebounds, three assists and two steals in 29 minutes of play, and the Pacers breezed to a 111-94 win.

Frank Kaminsky III dunks against the Pacers. He does not meet with much resistance. (Getty Images)

Heading into the season, most of us wondered whether swappingcoaches and point guards would really be enough to give the Indiana Pacers the super-charged offense that team president Larry Bird has been dying to see. Two weeks into the new campaign, it looks like we should’ve been focusing more on the other end of the court.

The Pacers got their doors blown off on Monday night, giving up 75 first-half points to the Charlotte Hornets en route to a 22-point defeat. The loss dropped Indiana to 3-4 on the season, and to the verge of the NBA’s defensive basement.

In five full seasons under Frank Vogel, the Pacers finished 10th, first, first, eighth and third in defensive efficiency. Through seven games under new head coach Nate McMillan, Indiana ranks 28th on that side of the ball, allowing an average of 109.3 points

The Knicks are stuck at 2-4 to start the 2016-17 season, which shouldn’t be too much of a whopper to argue away. It’s something that only those with Knick tattoos would holler at. This is a team that won 32 games last year prior to signing two rapidly declining former All-Stars from a flailing Bulls franchise that missed last season’s playoffs.

The team’s two wins included quality victories over those re-jiggered Bulls and a solid Memphis Grizzlies team, and its showing in a loss against Utah on Sunday afternoon should have pleased Knicks fans in spite of the team’s typical fourth-quarter meltdown. Yes, the team’s defense is horrendous, but the first reports out of NYC on Tuesday had team president Phil Jackson complaining because the offense wasn’t pointy enough:

Inspired by Carmelo Anthony’s call for action in July in the wake of the shooting deaths of African-American men by police in Louisiana and Minnesota and five police officers by an African-American man in Dallas, DeMarcus Cousins headlined an event promoting police-community relations.

Cousins was joined by Kings teammates Rudy Gay, Matt Barnes and Garrett Temple at Sacramento’s Midtown Bayside Church, where they held a closed-door conversation with a handful of the city’s law enforcement community members and an estimated 150 area high school students. The session was closed to the media, although participants held a press conference about the proceedings afterward.

“We opened up a meeting with the young students, and the players set the tone of what this was about, and it was to have dialogue with the community and talk about some of the

Kevin Durant leaving Oklahoma City to join the Golden State Warriors was the most landscape-shifting decision of the offseason, but Dwyane Wade choosing to leave the Miami Heat for a homecoming tour with the Chicago Bulls might have been the single most stunning move of the NBA summer.

For 13 seasons, Wade stood as the standard-bearer in South Beach. He’s the Heat’s all-time leader in a slew of statistical categories, including points, assists, steals, minutes and games played. He’s arguably the greatest pro athlete in Miami sports history; Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino could claim a level of individual success that rivaled Wade’s excellence, but Wade helped bring three NBA championships to Biscayne Bay. And yet, the most decorated Heat player ever walked away, and the team let him, setting the stage for what promises to be an emotional and somewhat awkward return on Thursday night, when Wade’s Bulls enter AmericanAirlines Arena to take on a Miami squad now led by Hassan Whiteside,

Ryan Anderson’s 3-pointer with 1:27 remaining gave the Houston Rockets a 111-102 lead and should have been the dagger, but their inability to grab a defensive rebound and a pair of lazy turnovers handed the Washington Wizards the ball down five with time to close the now two-possession gap.

Then, as referee Marc Davis signaled a 20-second timeout, spreading his arms and lifting his hands to his shoulders with 33 seconds remaining, Wizards point guard John Wall brushed the official’s elbow and was whistled for a technical foul. The call marked Wall’s second tech of the game, resulting in an ejection, and Harden’s ensuing free throw pushed Houston’s lead to six in an eventual 114-106 win.

Golden State Warriors superstar Stephen Curry experienced a rare terrible shooting night on Friday when he missed all 10 of his 3-pointers against the Los Angeles Lakers, ending an NBA-record streak of 157 straight games with at least one long ball. Faced with an opportunity to bounce back at home Monday against the New Orleans Pelicans, Curry did not just take advantage of his fresh start. He literally made more 3-pointers than an NBA player ever had in a single game.

Curry shot 13-of-17 from beyond the arc to set a new NBA record for 3-pointers in a game, claiming sole possession of a record he had previously shared with Kobe Bryant and Donyell Marshall. Curry tied that mark with 12 3-pointers — the last on a 35-foot buzzer-beater — in a dramatic overtime win against the Oklahoma City Thunder in February. Monday night’s record-breaker did not come under quite such incredible circumstances, but watching

The Dallas Mavericks and owner Mark Cuban received plenty of negative attention on Sunday night when it was revealed that the franchise had revoked the press credentials of ESPN.com reporters Marc Stein and Tim MacMahon (plus anyone else they might want to send to games). As reported by Tim Cato of Mavs Moneyball, Cuban had taken issue with ESPN’s decision to move MacMahon off full-time Dallas duty and into writing about more NBA teams. Never shy about making his opinions known, Cuban decided to bar the reporters from officially covering games at the American Airlines Center.

James Harden asks the assembled masses in D.C. if they’re entertained. (AP)

When Mike D’Antoni announced during training camp that he planned to use James Harden as the Houston Rockets’ full-time point guard, it seemed like the change was more about name than game. After all, in addition to his team-leading scoring, Harden has long served as the Rockets’ primary ball-handler and playmaker, routinely ranking among the league’s leaders in usage rate (the share of a team’s possessions a player finishes with a field-goal attempt, foul drawn or turnover) and time of possession.

Even so, the Rockets’ new head coach felt it made sense to make a more concerted effort to get the ball in his main man’s hands as soon as possible on every trip down the floor.

The squad featuring LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh annoyed the hell out of just about everyone in 2010 with James’ tortured Decision performance, followed by a salsabrationdance that came nearly two years before the team even had a championship to its name.

When LeBron and Co. started off the season 7-8, the punters had fun with it; and for good reason. In response, James and Wade attempted to paint themselves as dispassionate tough guys with the pants to match. It was more than a little diaphanous, and it only lasted as long as it took the Heat to win its first title with LeBron in June, 2012.

Mundane as it seems, that Earvin was able to start the week with some cardio and weight work is, in and of itself, something of a miracle. Twenty-five years ago today, we thought we’d lost him. We thought he was gone.

On Nov. 7, 1991, Magic Johnson — 10-time All-Star and All-NBA selection, five-time NBA champion, three-time Most Valuable Player, one of the greatest point guards and players ever to set foot on a basketball court — stood at a podium, told the world that he’d contracted HIV, and announced his retirement from the NBA, effective immediately.

At the time, an HIV-positive diagnosis was tantamount to a death sentence, and

The Miami Heat will wear uniforms sporting the names of fallen military members. (Miami Heat)

On the 10th anniversary of the team’s “Home Strong” initiative, the Miami Heat are taking their dedication to honoring the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces to another level this season.

The Heat have honored veterans at every home game since 2006, and last year the team unveiled military-themed “Home Strong” uniforms, which players wore for games around Veterans Day. Now, each team member will sport the name of one fallen service member on his “Home Strong” jersey.

“We introduced the uniforms last year, but we wanted to see if we could take the commitment that we have to the military to another level,” said Heat chief marketing officer Michael McCullough, “to honor one member of the military who gave his life in service of the country by putting a patch of that soldier’s name here on the players’ jerseys.”

Heat players will wear the uniforms for the team’s next five games, including home

The typical arc of the story’s re-tell has Magic Johnson, clutching a pained left hamstring, truly limping away from the NBA in 1989. The two and a half years spent between that supposed denouement as a player, suffered in Game 2 of Los Angeles’ title defense against Detroit in the NBA Finals, and Magic’s HIV diagnosis in 1991 have remained largely forgotten. It’s understandable, as we tend to let the larger moments overshadow the relatively significant, but that shouldn’t excuse it.

Magic Johnson wasn’t some too-slow, ill-fitting reminder of a previous era from 1989 through 1991. He didn’t act as some proto-version of Vlade Divac, milking every lope up court on his way to a low post that could have been ordered on special from the YMCA your father-in-law shoots at. His appearance in the 1991 NBA Finals wasn’t a token goodbye, nor was it an upset fling for the Lakers. His 1989-90 Most Valuable Player award